Upgrade

Read on for Step by Step Instructions on Updating the Firmware on the 8BitDo N30 Pro for Mac / PC.

Having got my RetroPie rig up and running I was thoroughly enjoying some retro arcade action. I had everything from an Atari to a NeoGeo, with 1000s of games from my youth all ready to go with the push of a button on my TV.

One thing felt wrong though and that was the controller. I was using a wired xBox / Windows controller. It worked well, plugged it in and it just worked as it should but it just felt wrong. Playing Streets of Rage on a modern xBox controller just didn’t capture the feel. It still played well, it is still an epic retro game, but I’m sure you get what I mean?

Then I decided to change the controller and started looking for an alternative. One that would work well, feel good and actually capture the feel of these older style games. I did a lot of reading on Amazon reviews as well as other sites and they all pointed me towards one brand – 8BitDo.

They have a wide range of controllers and accessories – as you can see mostly geared towards the Nintendo feel of things :

The PS4 is a cracking’ machine. Brilliant in fact. But really, Sony what were you thinking with only giving us a 500GB hard drive. ‘Oh it was to keep costs down,’ you will no doubt reply, but that is a bit of a false economy, as the costs go back up when we have to replace our HDDs ourselves.

It also to be far has been a bit of a slow start for me when it comes to PS4 gaming as at this moment in time I simply have the games that came free with PS+ as well as The Last of Use Remastered, Wolfenstein, Sniper III, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Infamous Second Son, Watch Dogs and Killzone. So a reasonable mediocre collection at this point, so imagine my surprise when I checked my free space and noted I had had 92GB out of my initial 500GB left!

Well all that meant was it was upgrade time.

The story is not that simply however. As in the past, probably January (isn) 2014 I did try to pre empt this situation and took it upon myself to do an early upgrade to limit the hassle of re-downloading all of my games and game data. however back then I was one of the PS4 users who couldn’t upgrade to 2TB. The reasons for that were that at that time Seagate made the only compatible and affordable 2TB drive for PS4. However it came in an enclosure, you had to take it apart…

That wouldn’t put me off however and I did purchase it back then, that’s when the problems arose. It was quickly established that if you cracked open your PS4 and found a HGST drive staring at you chance were that the Seagate drive was going to be incompatible with your system. Basically there was ‘handshake’ issues between the hardware, but I won’t bore you with that as now it is all thankfully ancient history! (Workarounds were present but I like things to work right 100% of the time, so I shifted the drive on to someone who could use it properly.)

So after a bit of reading I established with a degree of certainty that I could live with that the hand shake issues that were previously present were now gone. No matter what drive you had in your PS4 the Seagate 2TB M9T drive was / is now 100% compatible.

That’s all I needed to here, and off to the shops I trekked picking the drive up for £69.99 and back to the house I hurried to try it out.

The Acer Aspire One D257 is a capable netbook, but one of the choke points of the system is that it is supplied with 1Gb of RAM, this can be easily upgraded by the user to a maximum of 2Gb and this is one upgrade that I reccommend all users consider.

It is a fairly simple process that can be done without any issues by taking your time and being careful. It isn’t like your desktop where the RAM upgrade is almost foolproof, here you will need to undone some very delicate clips and leads, my best advice is :

1. Take your time.

2. Don’t force anything, if it is isn’t going, it won’t go.

Then my next bit of advice is watch this video, it isn’t mine, but I used it and it is very good and well explained :

From this video you will see that this can be broken down into a number of simple parts…

If you ask anyone in relation to current recommended upgrades for their machines the most highly recommended and common answer will be, ‘install an SSD.’

An SSD is a Solid State Drive, and it replaces your HDD (Hard Disk Drive). It is basically a giant flash drive, with no moving parts or spinning disks and and pull information from itself almost instantly.

It is hard to beat Wikipedia for definitions so here you go :

Solid State Drive :

Hard Disk Drive :

The main benefits from such an upgrade are :

1. Massive improvement is booting times.

2. Massive improvement in program launch times.

3. Massive improvement in data access times.

4. So basically everything runs quickly.

I decided to take this upgrade on, and it is one that you can easily do yourself in about twenty minutes!

Here is a quick guide to get you on your way to a massive speed improvement of your machine. At the end I have added a video that shows my machine booting prior to the upgrade with the standard 750GB HDD installed, then booting up with the new 256Gb SSD installed.

Good luck and take your time, there’s no rush, and no reason to be troubled by this upgrade.

1. Make sure you have everything : You will need your new SSD, an external case for your old HDD (as well as aiding in data transfer if you decide to go down that route), a set of precision screw drivers.

Flopboard, everyone’s favourite iOS App has been updated to version 2.0 and along with the nice new version number we get an impressive list of new features.

If you don’t know what Flipboard is you need a good shake but obviously that’s not going to happen so a brief explanation will have to suffice.

Flipboard is basically a magazine that you make and control by selecting your interests such as tech, motors, news, nature, photography and so on. You can also link in your favourite social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Flipboard then pulls all the latest news from your feeds and interests from across the web, categorises them for you within the app presenting them in a user friendly and intuitive manner, giving you your own tailored interactive magazine.

I recently decided to have a look at Windows 8, and as I am now a Mac User I had an old copy of Windows that I could upgrade on a spare parts machine. I needed to install Windows on the MAc to be able to upgrade it, but to be honest I am still learning at OSX. I needed to burn an ISO of the windows disk to a DVD and I had no idea what I needed or how to do it. I know that on the PC I needed separate software, thankfully with the Mac it was much easier, in fact it is this easy…

1. Insert a blank disc.
2. Start Disk Utility.
3. From the File menu, choose Open Disk Image and select the ISO to be burned.
4. In the list of volumes, you will now see an item representing the ISO file. Select it.
4. Click the Burn button and follow the instructions.

The wait is over, Mountain Lion is coming to the Mac Faithful, if you are not sure what that means get yourself over here to check out the new features, when you have finished drilling get back over here and read the tips on how to ensure you have a safe and smooth upgrade!

Now here is the best guide to make sure you are ready to upgrade and enjoy the goodness!

With the OS X Mountain Lion set to launch on Wednesday as announced by the company’s chief financial officer on Tuesday, Apple users around the world will be pumped to get their Macs upgraded. But what are some things they must keep in mind in order have successful transitions to the new operating system? Here are a few tips.

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